Sydney Walker, 4, holds a picture of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul before he spoke at a rally on Tuesday, March 6, 2012 in Nampa, Idaho.

Sydney Walker, 4, holds a picture of Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul before he spoke at a rally on Tuesday, March 6, 2012 in Nampa, Idaho.

Photo: Katherine Jones / The Associated Press

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Members of the Peik family Kristen, 20; Katie, 18; Stephen, 13; Teresa and twin brother Alex, 10, listen to Ron Paul address a group of home-school supporters at the Lawrence Barn on the day before the state primary January 9, 2012 in Hollis, N.H. less

Members of the Peik family Kristen, 20; Katie, 18; Stephen, 13; Teresa and twin brother Alex, 10, listen to Ron Paul address a group of home-school supporters at the Lawrence Barn on the day before the state primary ... more

Texas Congressman Ron Paul poses with supporters after his "Salute to Veterans" rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011.

Texas Congressman Ron Paul poses with supporters after his "Salute to Veterans" rally at the Iowa State Fairgrounds in Des Moines, Iowa on Wednesday, Dec. 28, 2011.

Photo: Lisa Krantz / San Antonio Express-News

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Justin Harvey and his wife, Tanis, listen to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul as their niece Charity, 5, naps during a rally Sunday, March 4, 2012, in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Justin Harvey and his wife, Tanis, listen to Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul as their niece Charity, 5, naps during a rally Sunday, March 4, 2012, in Fairbanks, Alaska.

Photo: Sam Harrel / The Associated Press

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The essential Ron Paul: 50 classic Ron Paul quotations

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Ron Paul has been making news for four decades with his blunt pronouncements on the Constitution, the Federal Reserve, U.S. interventionism, freedom and liberty. Here is a representative sampling of 50 quotations from speeches, books and newsletters that sum up the essence of the Texas lawmaker and three-time presidential candidate:

His philosophy in a nutshell

“There is only one kind of freedom and that’s individual liberty. Our lives come from our creator and our liberty comes from our creator. It has nothing to do with government granting it.”

On government

“When one gets in bed with government, one must expect the diseases it spreads.”

“Don’t steal — the government hates competition!”

On government spending

“We need to understand the more government spends, the more freedom is lost…Instead of simply debating spending levels, we ought to be debating whether the departments, agencies, and programs funded by the budget should exist at all.”

“The time has come to rein in the federal government, put it on a crash diet, and let the people keep their money and their liberty.”

“Mr. Speaker, I once again find myself compelled to vote against the annual budget resolution for a very simple reason: it makes government bigger.”

On taxes

“By the way, when I say cut taxes, I don’t mean fiddle with the code. I mean abolish the income tax and the IRS, and replace them with nothing.”

“One thing is clear: The Founding Fathers never intended a nation where citizens would pay nearly half of everything they earn to the government.”

On deficits and debt

“As long as we live beyond our means, we are destined to live beneath our means.”

“When the federal government spends more each year than it collects in tax revenues, it has three choices: It can raise taxes, print money, or borrow money. While these actions may benefit politicians, all three options are bad for average Americans.”

“Deficits mean future tax increases, pure and simple. Deficit spending should be viewed as a tax on future generations, and politicians who create deficits should be exposed as tax hikers.”

On civil liberties

“The foundation for a police state has been put in place and we must mobilize resistance before it’s too late.”

“I’m convinced that you never have to give up liberties to be safe. I think you’re less safe when you give up your liberties.”

“Liberty is lost through complacency and a subservient mindset. When we accept or even welcome automobile checkpoints, random searches, mandatory identification cards, and paramilitary police in our streets, we have lost a vital part of our American heritage. America was born of protest, revolution, and mistrust of government. Subservient societies neither maintain nor deserve freedom for long.”

On the meaning of the Constitution

“Our country’s founders cherished liberty, not democracy.”

On conservatism

“To me, to be a conservative means to conserve the good parts of America and to conserve our Constitution.”

On speaking truth to power

“Truth is treason in the empire of lies.”

“In the American political lexicon, ‘change’ always means more of the same: more government, more looting of Americans, more inflation, more police-state measures, more unnecessary war, and more centralization of power.”

On the Fed and monetary policy

“The value of our dollar and the level of our interest rates are not supposed to be manipulated by a few members of the power elite meeting secretly in a secret palace.”

“We need to take away the government’s money power. The banking industry needs its welfare check ended. The dollar’s soundness depends on its being untied from the machine that can make an infinite number of copies of dollars and reduce their value to zero.”

“It is no coincidence that the century of total war coincided with the century of central banking.”

“A supply of gold and silver that is limited in supply by nature cannot be inflated, and thus serves as a check on the growth of government.”

On terrorism

“They don’t attack us because we’re rich and we’re free. They attack us because we’re over there.”

On U.S. military action

“Legitimate use of violence can only be that which is required in self-defense.”

“War is never economically beneficial except for those in position to profit from war expenditures.”

“Throughout the 20th century, the Republican Party benefited from a non-interventionist foreign policy. Think of how Eisenhower came in to stop the Korean War. Think of how Nixon was elected to stop the mess in Vietnam.”

On the Iraq War

“Clichés about supporting the troops are designed to distract from failed policies, policies promoted by powerful special interests that benefit from war, anything to steer the discussion away from the real reasons the war in Iraq will not end anytime soon.”

“9/11 had nothing to do with Iraq. Fifteen of the 19 [hijackers] came from Saudi Arabia — so they are our bosom buddies and we’re their best friends.”

On health care

‘I had the privilege of practicing medicine in the early Sixties, before we had any government. It worked rather well, and there was nobody on the street suffering with no medical care.’

On abortion

“If you can’t protect life then how can you protect liberty?”

On drugs

“You wanna get rid of drug crime in this country? Fine, let’s just get rid of all the drug laws.”

“Prohibition on drugs doesn’t work.”

“If you want to get high on hemp, you’d have to have a cigarette as big as a phone pole.”

On hate-crime legislation

“Because federal hate-crime laws criminalize thoughts, they are incompatible with a free society.”

On gun control

“Prohibiting guns on campus made the Virginia Tech students less safe, not more.”

On milk

“I would like to restore your right to drink raw milk anytime you like.”

On the federal airport security apparatus

“It’s a bureaucratic monster.”

On federal disaster aid

“A state can decide. We don’t need somebody in Washington. I live on the Gulf Coast, we deal with hurricanes all the time. The local people rebuild the city. Built a sea wall and they survived without FEMA.”

On NASA

“Well, I don’t think we should go to the moon. I think we maybe should send some politicians up there.”

On politics as usual

“I think citizens should be representing us in Congress and the work should be reduced. We should cut their pay in half and let them go home and work.”

On privatization of Social Security

“I’d let young people get out of Social Security and have them get options to have their own medical care, because I was raised at a time when medical care was provided by a lot of people. And they had no government programs. And I never saw anybody out in the streets.”

On interest-group politics

“You don’t have freedom because you are a hyphenated American; you have freedom because you are an individual, and that should be protected.”

On race relations

“It is human nature that like attracts likes. But whites are not allowed to express this same human impulse. Except in a de facto sense, there can be no white schools, white clubs or white neighborhoods. The political system demands white integration, while allowing black segregation.” (1993 newsletter)

Martin Luther King Jr., “the FBI files reveal, was not only a world-class adulterer, he also seduced underage girls and boys … And we are supposed to honor this ‘Christian minister’ and lying Socialist satyr with a holiday that puts him on par with George Washington?” (1990 newsletter)

“Order was only restored in L.A. when it came time for the blacks to collect their welfare checks. The ‘poor’ lined up at the post office to get their handouts (since there were no deliveries) — and then complained about slow service.” (1992 newsletter)

On racially charged newsletter articles written in his name

“I didn’t write them, I didn’t read them at the time and I disavow them.”

On his place in the American political pantheon

“I’d like to think of myself as the flavor of the decade.”

“I would say that I’m pretty mainstream.”

On his libertarian movement

“Believe me, the intellectual revolution is going on, and that has to come first before you see the political changes. That’s where I’m very optimistic.”